


Driven

by orphan_account



Series: Tumblr Fic Requests [6]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, tumblr prompt request
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-18
Updated: 2015-08-18
Packaged: 2018-04-15 08:34:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4599996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Seconds chances aren't easy when you can't let go of the past.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Driven

Eren managed to make it to class that day, despite having slept horribly the night before. But he had already missed two days that week, and it was only Wednesday. Honestly, he was surprised he even bothered to keep trying. He had missed more school than he had attended, but he didn’t want to quit. It was his last lifeline, his last link to something normal.

It was no secret that Eren was losing his mind. Ever since he was little, nightmares and hallucinations had plagued his every step. His ‘episodes’ came without warning, the results unpredictable, and Eren often lashed out physically, trying to kill the things that only existed in his own mind. It was why he now lived in a special foster home that catered to psychological disorders, one that would be able to handle his ‘unique situation’, as the court put it. Okay, so he _might_ have launched himself off the roof, bit through his hand, and almost died because he _swore_ one of the monsters was outside his window. But it _had_ been there. It _had_!

It took three surgeries and four months of recovery before he could even consider going back to classes, and his new foster parent was kind enough to let him wait until the following year to try again. But now it was three months into the school year and he’d only attended maybe twenty days total. The episodes were coming more frequently, more vivid. People around him suddenly _looked_ different, wearing different clothes, holding weapons, trying to kill the monsters that plagued their world—

“Eren!” a voice snapped, and his eyes blinked, the bloody scene clearing and the science lab coming back into focus. Eyes were staring at him, a strange hush in the room, before murmurs began to fill it. Familiar murmurs he had grown used to hearing but still cut through him like sharp knives.

_He_ _’s freaking out again._

_He_ _’s bleeding all over the desk._

_Did he bite through his hand again?_

_Such a weirdo._

“Go to the office, Eren,” the teacher said, helping Eren stagger to his feet. He didn’t go to the office, though. He found a side door, pushing out of the building and making his way down the sidewalk, not caring how he looked to others. What did it matter anymore?

His head ached, his body hurt, and his hand throbbed something terrible as the pain set in. His mouth was filled with the familiar taint of blood, and sweat beaded his forehead as he struggled to remember where he was. The sidewalk kept shifting into a dirt path, trees replacing the buildings and fading back again, horses and riders overlapping the cars on the road.

Voices reached his ear, and he wondered when he ended up on the ground, kneeling and shaking and covered in vomit. Bodies pressed around him, hands touching him, and he screamed. One lone voice cut through the noise, bringing blessed silence. Hands carefully pried his own away from his face, wrapping long fingers around thin wrists, and hooded grey eyes looking at him carefully.

“Eren,” he whispered, and Eren gasped, lurching forward and wrapping his arms around the man who was wearing a suit-and-tie, yet also wearing a green cloak and a white uniform.

“Levi,” he moaned. “Levi, Levi, Levi.” He kept repeating the man’s name, the chant turning into sobs. A hand stroked through his hair, calming him, and he felt another hand coming to slide under his knees, lifting him into a carry and moving him away from the mass of people surrounding them, watching the spectacle. How often did you get to watch a fifteen-year-old have a mental breakdown in the middle of downtown?

The sound of doors opening, the blast of warm air, confused voices, the rumble of Levi’s chest as he responded, those all surrounded Eren without penetrating the haze he found himself in. Bright lights and cool porcelain was under him as hands worked to remove the stained clothes covering his body. He shivered in the cool air, but a blanket was wrapped around him, and a wet paper towel wiped at his face and chin, hands smoothing over his hair and grooming him. When Eren blinked back the haze far enough to see those eyes looking down at him in concern, Eren whispered again brokenly.

“Is this real? Are you real, or am I hallucinating again?” Eren laughed, the sound bitter and choking as he leaned forward, growing stronger.

“This is real, Eren. You’re sitting in a bathroom in Sina Tower, right by my office, in fact. Let’s get you cleaned up and calmed down, and you can tell me what happened.”

“Sina Tower?” Eren mumbled, his mind spinning as he tried to place where that was. It… was the next city over. At least twenty miles from his school. His stomach lurched again. “What’s today? What time is it?”

“It’s Friday, almost seven at night.”

“Oh god,” Eren moaned. Levi tilted his chin up, keeping eye contact.

“What time do you… last remember it being?”

“Ten in the morning,” he laughed. “I got kicked out of class for freaking out again. Shit. Shit, I’m going to be in so much trouble…”

“Do I need to call your parents, let them know you’re okay?”

“Don’t got any,” Eren said dreamily, “Mom was eaten by Titans when the wall broke, remember?”

“I do remember. But that was a lifetime ago, Eren. Titans don’t exist in this life. We don’t have to fight them anymore.”

“They’re real! I see them! They’re— They’re _real_.”

“Oh, Eren,” Levi murmured, drawing him into a hug. The man seemed to not care that there was drying vomit smeared along his suit from Eren, or that Eren was essentially naked under the blanket, trembling, or that anyone could walk in on them like this. He just held Eren close as he cried, repeating over and over again, “They’re real, they’re real!”

* * *

Levi visited him at his foster home every evening. Some nights they would talk about their past, the world that Eren had never let go of. Helping him fill in the gaps in his memories, helping him  _separate_ the memories. Other nights they would play video games, Eren showing him his favourite games and Levi teaching him strategy. There were nights where Levi helped Eren work through his never-ending pile of homework, all the missed assignments from the day classes had begun.

Eren’s foster parents allowed it, seeming to accept Levi’s presence without question. If anything, they seemed… relieved? Hopeful? But Eren was having fewer and fewer episodes. The first week he managed to make it through school without having to miss a day, Levi took him out to celebrate. On days where Eren wasn’t doing so well, he would find himself standing outside Sina Tower, and Levi would come down and lead him to his office, where Eren would quietly sit on a small loveseat against the wall, wrapped in a blanket and listening to Levi’s deep, smooth voice as he worked.

“Did you…” Eren asked one night, wrapped in a blanket and held against Levi’s chest as they watched movies in the living room, his foster parents having gone out for the evening and leaving them with privacy. “Did you have a hard time— like this? Wondering what’s real… Seeing things?”

Levi was quiet for a while, before leaning down and placing his mouth beside Eren’s ear, as if someone would overhear them.

“I did. When I was younger, it was harder. I sometimes found myself thrown back in my memories, unable to draw myself out of them. But, like you, I found someone who remembered, who had a better grasp on it, and they taught me how to keep myself grounded in the present, to put the memories back where they belonged.”

“How? How did you do it?!” Eren asked, his voice cracking. “I’m tired of being crazy!”

“I found something that kept me focused. A goal that, even if the visions overwhelmed me, kept me moving forward. Do you want to know what that goal was?” he asked, and Eren nodded frantically.

“It was finding you. Making sure that you were able to be reborn in this life, that you were okay. Seeing you outside my office, it was as if fate had brought you to me. Even if you didn’t have a single memory of that time, I wouldn’t have been able to stay away from you, Eren.”

“Are there— Do some people not remember?”

“No, they don’t. Erwin doesn’t remember, and Hanji remembers bits and pieces. I found your friend Armin back several years ago, and I couldn’t figure out if he remembered or had learned to not talk about it. I don’t know why, but some people remember more than others.”

“Oh,” Eren said, going limp in Levi’s arms. “I… what kind of goal would help me?”

“It has to be something that will drive you, keep you focused no matter how confusing reality might become. Something that fills you from head to toe, makes you burn from the inside out.”

Eren nodded, eyes distant as they continued to watch the movie.

* * *

“I can’t believe it,” Eren murmured, staring down at the diploma in his hand. Two years ago, he never would have thought he’d make it to this point. He had been so far behind in his classes, his sanity slipping away faster than Eren could find it again. But now, here he stood, on the stage shaking hands in his graduation robes, his future stretched out far ahead of him.

Levi gave him a hug as he stepped off the stage, whispering his own congratulations in his ear. Eren smiled, looking over Levi’s shoulder at his foster parents, who beamed brightly at him. Isabel and Farlan had been nothing but supportive, and it had been a surprise to learn that they also had been reincarnated from _that time_ , though they had died before Eren could meet them. They, however, had been close with Levi. Which explained a _lot_ once he had learned that.

“So, now what?” Farlan asked as they sat around the table at the restaurant, and all eyes turned toward Eren. The boy had only hinted at his goals, at what he’d decided to do with his future, and Eren smiled, looking down at his plate as he carefully formed his next words.

“I’m going to go to university,” he said. “Psychology. I know— I know what the signs are now. I want to find others like us, trying to cope with living in a world free of the terror that caged us before. To help them learn to live again, like you three did for me.” Eren looked up with tears glimmering in his eyes.

“I’m going to save them all.”

**Author's Note:**

> **[Find me on Tumblr!](annoyinglittletwit.tumblr.com) **
> 
> I will be tracking the tags  
> fic: Driven ; series: Tumblr Fic Requests ; series: TFR


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